Outrage over rape kit policy

I cannot believe I have not seen a letter of outrage to the editor regarding the practice of the Salt Lake Police Department not to do routine DNA tests of rape kits. Worse, they sometimes even throw them out without testing.

The victims of rape have been betrayed by the police department and justice system if they find themselves as one of the victims whose kit has not been processed. The reason for processing these kits is twofold.

One is to gather evidence against the perpetrator and the second is to ascertain whether the perpetrator has committed multiple rapes, which is often the case. A person seldom commits only one rape and never repeats. So with the more than 500 kits never fully processed, who is not to say that the police would find that numerous rapes have been committed by the same person?

Who knows how many rapes could have been prevented had the perpetrator been caught early on rather than allow multiple rape kits containing the same untested DNA to sit on a shelf?

If this is the Salt Lake Police Department's policy then they need to "man up," admit their error and change their policy in this critical enforcement cause.